Digital Man Barry Sonnenfeld tests out three GPS devices in the traffic-clogged streets of L.A. Here, his three (and a half) favorites.

Only seems that way, Sweetie. And we never tested them in Los Angeles.

Yes, the car felt a little crowded with five electronic voices telling us which way to go (they often disagreed), but I loved hearing them pronounce Cahuenga, Sepulveda, and other West Coast boulevards. And I enjoyed watching the valets react as their eyes adjusted to five glowing devices glaring back at them from the windshield of our rented Prius. Sweetie explained their look was not one of respect, but Im sure she was wrong.

Actually, there have been some real breakthroughs in portable GPSs over the last year, in spite of Sweeties headshaking dismissal. Here are three of the best:

The brilliance of the Dash Express ($400; dash.net) is that it is always connected to a cellular network, which lets you e-mail addresses to the unit. In the morning, my assistant would send meeting locations to the Dash, which downloaded them as soon as I turned on the car. Using the same technology, all Dash units on the road are constantly transmitting their location and speed to some central computer, which then analyzes the info and sends real-time traffic data back to each Dash, color coding the roads. The more people buy the Dash, the more accurate the information will be. Sadly, the thing takes a surprisingly long time to find a GPS signal and is slow to recalculate when you reject a route you know is stupid. Plus, the map is purposely drab so the color-coded roads stand out. However, if your interest in GPS is mostly about traffic alerts during your daily commute, this is your device.

Sweetie and I traveled down to Laguna Niguel for the weekend, and the bitching and moaning of the human voice (Sweetie) on the trip down practically drowned out the five GPS voices, so I cheerfully offered to test only one on the way back. We tried the voice-activated Garmin Nüvi 880 ($1,000; garmin.com), my favorite of the three. The Garmin comes with a remote button that straps to your steering wheel and controls the voice-recognition system. You can input an address by speaking, and also ask it for the nearest gas station, bank, or Wolfgang Puck restaurant. The Nüvi uses an FM antenna to gather traffic information from MSN Direct, displaying alerts and offering detours. It also reads aloud SMS text messages from certain Bluetooth phones (not the BlackBerry).

The TomTom GO 930 ($500; tomtom.com) also lets you input information via voice recognition, though its voice interface is not as good as the Garmins. The TomToms most interesting feature is a sort of wiki traffic system -- allowing users to tell TomTom central command when its maps or directions are wrong. You can change your map and share the information with others, and you can set your unit to accept changes others have made, specifying your level of trust from anything anyone sends to information verified by TomTom. And unlike Sweetie, the unit responded to every voice command I made.

>> As if We Werent Dependent Enough on Our Blackberrys

While I was testing the GPS units above, I had an additional device suction-cupped to the Priuss windshield: my AT&T BlackBerry 8820 with TeleNav. The $10-a-month subscription service lets you type in your destination, or use voice recognition, to tell it where you want to go. The BlackBerry gives you turn-by-turn voice and visual directions, and is pretty great.

Barry Sonnenfeld directed Men in Black and is the executive producer of Pushing Daisies.

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